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Wesley Morgan

Covering the Afghan war between 2009 and 2017, I would sometimes see Afghan soldiers in a tiger-stripe camouflage pattern that the U.S. and Afghan militaries didn’t wear. It was an open secret that this was the uniform of the C.I.A.’s army of Afghan commandos, the Zero Units.

Wesley Morgan

10,000 former Zero Unit members have been resettled in the United States. Matthieu Aikins and I teamed up to investigate their history; we talked to more than a dozen Zero Unit veterans, along with more than 30 former C.I.A. officers and U.S. military veterans who fought beside them.

Wesley Morgan

After a Zero Unit veteran shot two U.S. Army National Guard members in Washington in November and President Trump used it as an excuse to announce a “permanent pause on third-world migration,” we dug into these former C.I.A. assets’ status here in the United States.

Wesley Morgan

Unlike other Afghan forces, the Zero Units were directly paid and controlled by the C.I.A. Although they were labeled by critics as death squads, the U.S. came to consider them effective and trustworthy local assets. Their evacuation was regarded by many as fulfilling a debt of honor.

Wesley Morgan

Human rights groups have accused the Zero Units of war crimes, including summary executions, which the C.I.A. denies. But U.S. operatives told us about the killings of prisoners at the orders of the units’ American advisers, who sometimes carried out them out themselves.

Wesley Morgan

Many Zero Unit veterans in the U.S. live in fear that they’ll be deported. Some have been detained by ICE. There are indications that the Department of Homeland Security may use the allegations of war crimes that the C.I.A. has denied to justify their deportations.